Jared and the Giant Peach

Holy damn, we just made an IPA.

For the first beer after getting my new mill I decided to make a huge single malt IPA with mostly New Zealand hops and some Amarillo for bittering. Something to burn your taste buds out.

8kgs (17.6lbs) of Maris Otter.

320g (11.3oz) hops.

21 litres (5.5 gallons) of beer.

It ended up being about 300 IBUs and 8.5% ABV.

Here's the hop schedule:

40g Amarillo @ FWH

40g Amarillo @ 60 mins

60g Nelson Sauvin @ 30 mins

60g Motueka @ 20 mins

60g Cascade @ 10 mins

40g Motueka, 20g Nelson Sauvin @ flame out

Oh and Dan, who just got back from the states visiting family brought us some presents which I will talk about later on. Hint: it has something to do with IPA.

Click to enlarge!

'Milhouse' is what I'm calling my new mill. He's such a champ.

From about this point on, Jared got his hands on the camera and started taking ludicrous amounts of pictures. I filtered through them and he actually got some pretty tasty shots. Thanks Jared!

Dan's first time putting a record on, and it was a good one too!

Seriously some of the best brewing music.

I honestly didn't think we'd fit 8kgs of malt in my mash tun with 26Ls of water... But we did, and it smelled amazing. Maris Otter is just perfect.

Time for a beer!

You know what kinda annoys me? This trend of making weak ass smoke beers and labelling them 'Bacon Beers'. Any time someone calls the Schlenkerla Rauchbier a 'Bacon Beer' I want to slap them, that beer is the best example of a smoke beer, and it only tastes like bacon because both the flavour of bacon and smoked malt are derived from smoking over a wood fire. It would be like eating some smoked cheese and saying "this is bacon cheese!". Epic make great beers, but this beer is just kinda weak.

The first addition of hops: 40 grams of Amarillo at first wort hopping. Damn! It smells and looks just like a big juicy peach.

Boil time!

I remember my nan used to drink spirulina when I was younger, this is exactly how it looked, but definitely not how it smelled.

Speaking of grandparents, my other nan also bought me this sweet little bowl as a birthday present once, and it is a perfect hop measurer! Particularly with some Nelson Sauvin in it!

Lots of Motueka too, probably one of the best smelling hops I've ever used.

Waiting for the next addition.

I feel like using this many hops is somehow a criminal offence...

Flameout hops and then into an ice bath, give it a few stirs every few minutes and let it cool.

I'm hungry, what shall we have to eat?

OH SHIT!

That's right, the one and only.

Look at his smug little face. GOD DAMNIT DAN.

Dan: "If you fuck this up Oscar, I swear I'm going to murder you."

So as I mentioned earlier, Dan went back to Nappa Valley in CA for his sister's wedding and just happened to bring a few of these back for us with him. It is probably his most talked about beer, and there is definitely a reason for that.

Pliny the Elder is an incredible beer. It has 100/100 on both Beer Advocate and Ratebeer, which obviously doesn't automatically make it the best, but it's still pretty convincing.

Actually tasting the beer was a weird experience. Pliny the Elder has a sort of mythical aura within the craft beer community, particularly in somewhere like Australia where we can't really get it retail without it losing some of it's freshness, and Russian River are very obsessed with freshness (it says DO NOT AGE about 7 times on the label). Dan made sure to get it just before he left, and the bottles we had were bottled about 2 weeks before we got them.

It is an amazing beer. That's it really. My expectations were the highest for any beer I've ever drank, and they were met, but this beer isn't some crazy amazing weird different beer, it is just a perfect example of a double IPA. Beautiful sunset orange, amazing smooth bitterness that lingers just long enough, and an incredibly rounded hop flavour and aroma. Dan even said that he wasn't sure it should have 100 scores because it's not different, but then we both agreed that it does deserve it because it is the best example of a double IPA we've ever had. You just can't compare it to any other beer. I wanted to compare it to Epic's Hop Zombie, but it just doesn't work.

Also, I've yet to find an Australian IPA that could even come close to this beer. Why not?!

But really I am actually hungry, so we made some food.

Shredded supermarket roast chicken with diced bacon, jalapeños, and this awesome bourbon smoky bbq sauce we found, all smooshed into a wrap with cheese on top and home-made coleslaw.

Yep, that's how you make food to go with the Pliny.

So we ate in the backyard in the amazing Melbourne spring twilight.

Then me and Dan squeezed beer out of some hops. We weren't leaving any behind.

This was just one out of about 4 strainer loads of hops.

Got my yeast starter out, Wyeast American Ale II, pitched it into the beer. Got 1.082, a little under what I was expecting, but I got a couple of litres more liquid. Got to get onto my calculations!

Then we jumped onto the couches and put on an episode of Spaced, because Dan hasn't seen it yet. I've probably seen it about 10 times through. It's one of the best series ever.

Oh and Dan brought some more beers too!

Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Wild. This beer was awesome! A really hoppy, fruity, funky wheat beer that apparently you can buy from the supermarkets in the states for $10 a 6 pack. That doesn't make me sad at all.

It's time to get funky, so we put on the Mighty Boosh, which Dan hadn't seen either!

Russian River Supplication. Uhh... Holy shit.

A sour beer with Brettanomyces yeast aged in Pinot Noir barrels with added cherries. This just blew my mind. I never thought I'd see the day when the Caractere Rouge got a run for it's money, but this is it. The added funk from the Brett almost takes it a step above, and speaking of the devil:

Rodenbach Caratere Rouge. The lack of focus in this pic indicates that we had had just the right amount of beers.

This was the last beer of the night. If you haven't tried this beer you really should. A red sour beer aged with cherries. It is just a perfect example of a really, really good sour beer. At our bar we refer to it as 'Unicorn Blood'.

Cheers! Here's a picture of a door knob that Jared took:

Oscar

Dan's Blue Cheese and Bacon burger and stuff...

So i've been back on the brew train pretty hard for the last couple of weeks.

So hard in-fact that i managed to pitch a beer straight on top of another beers trub, which i've wanted to do for a while, and fuuuuck me it is fermenting pretty quick. I pitched it this arvo at about 2, and by about 6 it was makin' giant yeast monsters through the masses of hops. Nice!

The first beer in question was an English Pale Ale. Pretty standard, a little medium crystal and a little rye, Fuggles and EKG. Racked it off into a secondary today on top of some more EKG, and then poured my other beer, which i had no chilled, on top of the US-05 yeast cake it left.

The other beer i will refrain from talking about too much, it's been an idea that's been brewing (HA!) in my mind for a while and i don't want any bad omens. Let's just say that it's a big IPA with lots of twists. If it turns out well, i'll let you know, and maybe taste.

Also, the reason i used US-05 for an English Pale Ale and not S-04 (which i usually prefer) is because i was getting a bit sick of malty beers (not really), and wanted something dry to combat this insanely hot weather we've been having in Melbourne recently. Also, i couldn't be bothered going all the way to the brew shop to buy anything different. Also, i love English hops and want to see if i can get them to come out a bit more. Like an APA style but with English ingredients. ALSO, it will be used to pay some of the people who are helping me out with this stage play i'm writing/directing later this year, and most of my friends want Coopers, not Red Hill Scotch Ale. But that's for another blog... Which i don't have.

Now on to something important, right?! How about these fucking burgers we made while brewing RESTRICTED INFORMATION. Thanks to Dan, the Californian who has been working at Deja Vu for a few months now on his OE, we managed to make Blue Cheese and Bacon burgers, which is a concept so insane that only an American could come up with for sure.

Don't eat me, love me.

This was just, like, ridiculous. Here's what we put in it:

BLUE CHEESE and BACON burgers:

- Homemade burger patties: mince with diced onion, egg, bread crumbs, Worcestershire sauce,  salt, pepper, orange rind and a bit of orange juice and paprika. (these were my creation, just so you know)

- CRISPY bacon. It has to be the CRISPYEST.

- Avocado.

- A big mushroom with Worcestershire sauce and butter, fried until soggy.

- Blue Cheese, the stinky kind.

- Green tomato relish.

Just smear the blue cheese all over those burger buns and grill them till nice and melted, then put everything together. Once your done find a good sized coffin and get someone to bury you, life's just not worth living anymore.

But before you do give your life up to the beauty of this wonderful burger, don't forget to wash it down with an Epic Hop Zombie, a Tuatara Double Trouble, an Anderson Valley Heelch O' Hops, an 8wired Hopwired and a Yeastie Boys Digital IPA.

Those were the beers we had that brew day, which Dan brought around (he is now obsessed with NZ beers), and they went perfectly with the monstrous burger.

Speaking of New Zealand again, i'm getting a bit worried. Is it tax in Australia that is hurting the craft beer industry the most? We went to the Catfish recently (great new set-up) during their Wellington craft beer event, and the beers were just amazing. Especially Garage Project La Calavera Catrina.

Nothing against the Australian Craft Beer scene, i've said it once, and i'll say it before, i think there are some of the best beers in the world being produced right here, and i know from personal experience that there are strong forces at work against it, but i want to see more variation and weirdness, it is what i believe to be the essence of craft beer.

Just as a note, this is in no way a professional opinion.

Anyway, here is an amazing picture:

Full sized picture here.

That's one of Saturn's moons, which apparently used to be a bigger planet, but has been smashed down to size.

Cheers!